Dozens more gardaí promised for Dublin city centre in wake of attack on US tourist

Dozens of additional gardaí are to be assigned to stations in north and south central Dublin within two weeks, the Garda has said.

Assistant Commissioner Angela Willis said these officers would be deployed on high visibility patrols in an effort to tackle violence and anti-social behaviour in the city.

Ms Willis, who is in charge of policing in the capital, also said that Garda Commissioner Drew Harris had also promised that the Dublin region would receive a continued flow of new personnel from the Garda College in the months ahead.

Speaking at the Dublin City Joint Policing Committee on Monday, Ms Willis said a recently opened Garda station on O’Connell Street in the north inner city had “very, very little, if any, callers” after 10pm daily, despite being open until 2am. As a result, she said, it was doubtful that its opening hours would be extended soon.

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“I’d rather have those guards out on the street, rather than in an office that nobody actually visits later on into the night,” she said, adding there were 2,199 arrests across Dublin for a range of crimes in June.

[ Teenage boy charged in connection with assault on American tourist ]

Minister for Public Expenditure Pascal Donohoe, who represents Dublin Central in the Dáil, credited the opening of the O’Connell Street Garda station with already having had a positive impact on the street.

Ms Willis strongly implied at the meeting that having significantly more resources could not halt all violent incidents in Dublin.

She pointed out that when US tourist Stephen Termini (57) was assaulted last Wednesday night on Talbot Street in Dublin 1, there were 16 gardaí and three sergeants on duty in the area under Operation Citizen, which aims to deter anti-social behaviour.

The Garda and Government have come under pressure over a perception of increased violence and lawlessness in Dublin city centre in the wake of the serious group assault that has left Mr Termini with life-changing injuries.

Tánaiste and Minister for Defence Micheál Martin has insisted that broadly speaking Dublin city centre was “safe” but acknowledges that at times people were concerned about “particular areas”.

Mr Martin said he had heard of people being randomly attacked on the street in other parts of the country, which was “not acceptable”, but that it could happen “periodically in society”.

Mr Martin said alcohol and drug abuse was “not far away when you see very vicious attacks of the kind that happened last week”.

The Fianna Fáil leader said along with increasing Garda numbers, which were impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, wider issues such as young people engaging in violent activity and random attacks had to be examined.

“Under various plans and programmes that the gardaí have, there’s been a lot of presence of the gardaí and a lot of patrols on our streets,” he said. “It’s not as if they’re invisible from our streets, anything but. Of course we can always do with increased numbers on our streets and with the increased numbers coming through Templemore, it will be the objective to have wider visibility on our streets.”

Earlier, Dublin’s Lord Mayor Daithí de Róiste said gangs of teenagers were now “terrorising” people on the streets of Dublin and as Ireland was “awash with money”, conditions in the Garda should be examined to entice more people into a career in policing,

Mr de Róiste said falling Garda numbers in the north central division was a significant problem. While hundreds of recruit gardaí were currently in training, almost the same numbers were leaving the force – via retirements and resignations.

“Anything that allows more gardaí onto the streets (should be examined), whether that’s people over the age of 34, whether it’s increasing the package that’s available to members, it’s all welcome because it’s absolutely needed now,” he said when asked on RTÉ Radio One about the challenges involved in recruiting gardaí in what is now a full employment economy.

“The country is awash with money at the moment. Maybe we should start making it more enticing for people to go into An Garda Síochána to make a career out of it,” he added, saying more could be done that raising the maximum age for Garda recruitment above 34 years.

However, Mr de Róiste believed Dublin was “a safe city in the main” and that some violent events would always occur in large cities. At the same time, people felt unsafe in Dublin due to “young gangs terrorising people and that sense of lawlessness amongst 14, 15, 16-year-olds”.

He believed those teenagers did not fear encountering a policing presence on the streets because that presence had declined. “High visibility” policing would both deter antisocial behaviour and street violence and gangs, and would also help address the fear of crime.

Assistant Garda Commissioner Angela Wallis, who is in charge of policing in Dublin, was due to appear before the Dublin City Joint Policing Committee on Monday afternoon. While that meeting was expected to address the level of policing and violence in the inner city, it was scheduled before the attack on Mr Termini last week.

The Government, especially Minister for Justice Helen McEntee, has come under pressure since the attack on Mr Termini, from Buffalo, New York, last Wednesday night. He had been staying at a guest house on Talbot Street, Dublin 1, and is understood to have just left his accommodation at 10.40pm when an attack by a gang of youths took place near Store Street Garda station.

[ Una Mullally: Getting tough on Dublin ‘thuggery’ won’t solve the city’s fundamental problem ]

[ Violent attacks: ‘There’s an edge in Dublin city . . . and no consequences when you step over that edge’ ]

Emergency services were called, and he was taken to Beaumont Hospital where he remains in intensive care and has reportedly suffered life-changing injuries.

A Garda investigation is under way into the attack and to date one suspect, a 14-year-old boy, has been arrested and charged. He appeared before a special sitting of the Children’s Court, held at the Criminal Courts of Justice, on Sunday afternoon.

The attack on Mr Termini, who was considering moving to Ireland permanently, followed a similar attack in central Dublin on a Ukrainian actor last month. Oleksandr Hrekov (23) was in Dublin to appear in The Abbey Theatre and was attacked by a gang, at nearby Eden Quay, and left with serious facial injuries. It appears he was wounded in the face with a broken glass, and bitten, by a group who attacked him while trying to steal his cigarettes.

Has Dublin become more violent?

Garda sources who spoke to The Irish Times said they did not believe central Dublin had become more violent, though they had noted an increase in street gang attacks. This often resulted in a victim being targeted by a very large group, almost always young men, and suffering serious injuries.

Assaults causing harm have doubled in the past decade across the Republic; from 3,071 offences in 2013 to 6,092 crimes last year. That figure for last year was a record high in the period since the Central Statistics Office assumed responsibility for publishing the Republic’s crime data in 2003. Furthermore, “assaults causing harm” last year were 20 per cent higher than in 2019, before the pandemic.

The trends for other assaults – less serious assaults, often in public places – also reached a new record last year, with 14,001 offences recorded. However, that is only marginally higher than the level seen pre-pandemic; some 13,818 assaults recorded in 2019, for example. In central Dublin, however, the level of assaults was about the same last year as in 2019. In the first quarter of this year, in four of the six Garda divisions that make up the entire Dublin policing region, assaults were lower than in the same period in 2019.

However, Garda sources accepted that much of the low-level anti social behaviour – including people being challenged and threatened without being assaulted – was not captured by crime data because many such incidents are not reported to the Garda. The same sources said as Garda numbers have continued to fall, policing generally has become more specialised, with on street policing coming under serious pressure.

Is there a shortage of gardaí in Dublin?

Garda bureaus – specialising in investigating specific crime types including frauds and organised crime, among others – have been increased in size in recent years. While that is regarded as a positive development, it has bled resources from frontline street policing into those units at a time when overall Garda numbers were falling, the sources said.

[ Garda numbers continue to decline as resignations and retirements accelerate ]

In April, Garda numbers dropped below 14,000 for the first time in several years and in the north inner city numbers are down four per cent over the last six months. Garda numbers nationally had been at a record high of 14,750 as the pandemic struck in March, 2020. However, at that point the Garda College, Templemore, Co Tipperary, was forced to close and recruitment was stopped for a prolonged period.

While the recruitment process has recommenced at full capacity since the start of the year, the plan to recruit 1,000 additional gardai this year has been scaled back to 800. In the classes that have entered the Garda College this year, many recruits have deferred, or declined, their places in training. That has resulted in the planned intakes into the college having been smaller than the 200 planned for in each new class. The first intake in February numbered 135 recruits while the second, in May, involved 154.

If intake trends – and resignations and retirements – continue at the same rate to year end, as witnessed in the first five months of the year, the fall in Garda numbers will be halted this year, with perhaps a modest increase of less than 100 nationally. Substantial growth will only begin to be achieved next year. However, Garda Headquarters, Phoenix Park, Dublin, has pointed out the size of the force was at a record high when the pandemic commenced. It has said recruitment was now well underway again and would continue next year until the force reached 15,000 and then grow further.

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